SHAKER MOVER
Wandering Leads Me Back
The music of Shaker Mover has been a long time in the making. I first started writing songs with my brother when we were kids. Out first songs were deep, soulful explorations of such topics as dissecting frogs in science class, how much we loved money, and “jamming down the street.”
What better way to capture the feeling of a moment than by reaching for a guitar and singing? Since then, when my heart has been stirred by melancholy, the complications of love, or the poignancy of the passing of time, I’ve inscribed moments into music.
Up to now, my songs have been largely for myself—but with my first album “Wandering Brings Me Back” I’m sending my music out there, like a message in a bottle, hoping that beyond myself, somebody else will find in the words and the music a resonance that they can relate to.
The oldest of the songs on this album was written in 1998, when I was in film school. I had just emerged from watching “When We Were Kings” feeling my feet bouncing with energy and singing to myself: Come on Cassius, kick me around! Which mutated into: “Come On, Angel, kick me around—you pick me up when I fall down.”
“Wandering Leads Me Back” finds me thinking about the passing of time and saying Good-bye to people I love. The song “Dying Friend” contains a moment of reflecting all the simple, almost mundane things that make life beautiful, rolling out in a stream of consciousness. “English Has Failed Me” was written in the middle of the Covid-19 shutdowns—at a time when I was feeling, more deeply than usual, the inadequacy of words to heal differences in human beings. “The Fear of Growing Old” is a duet that I sing with my wife. “Hold on to me, I will hold on to you! We’ll stay close together when the storm comes tearing through!”
Ten songs. My quick hello to you. Waving, as if from the top of a faraway hill.